It is Sunday, early, crisp.
The fighting in Ukraine continues — the Ukrainian infantry mastering the Javelin, Strela and Stinger anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. These quickly-acquired skills have, incredibly, checkmated the Russian T-90, T-80 and T-72 tanks that have rolled into combat.
“After its first lightening strike failed, Russia switched to one of its old standbys; using artillery. Most Russian artillery strikes use unguided weapons that can exact a huge human toll when attacking cities — without necessarily achieving any useful strategic objective,” says the Wall Street Journal this Sunday morning.
Russia’s cruise missiles — the Iskander and the ship-launched Kalibr — can be controlled. They are also accurate.
The Iskander’s accuracy (CEP) is 5 to 7 meters. This means that half of the Iskanders fired will land within a circle 5 to 7 meters wide. Which means that the high-rise apartment buildings — the Soviet-styled blocks where most Ukrainians live — are being deliberately targeted.
The use of cruise missiles seems to be consistent with the (old) Soviet habit that routinely reduced many ancient (European) cities to cement dust in World War II.
In those days the Soviet army favored the 122 and 152 mm howitzer—and now their grandsons still maintain these (upgraded) weapons in their reserves.
In WWII they often deployed these howitzers in mass formation, concentrating up to 200 guns per kilometer. They concentrated the fire of these guns on relatively small parts of the battlefield turning that topography into a moonscape.
They also used massed rockets — the infamous Katyusha — which was carried into combat on 2 1/2 ton Studebaker trucks. A battery could fire its entire load in 7 seconds, delivering 4.3 tons of explosives onto an area of 400,000 square kilometers, having the same effect as if they had massed 72 howitzers. Film of the Soviet army launching these inaccurate, indiscriminate, building-busting rockets into Berlin is still ubiquitous on the internet.
In the Battle of Berlin, the Soviets began shelling on April 20, 1945, and didn’t stop until their troops were over-running Templehof Airport. These massed guns dropped more total tonnage on Berlin than was dropped during the entirety of World War II by Allied bombers.
But there is a problem with this kind of warfare.
In 1944 and 1945 it was hard for the Soviets to keep their howitzers supplied with shells. Artillery shells are heavy — 100 pounds or more — and getting hundreds of thousands of these shells to the front is extremely hard. These rockets and shells were a priority and would often bump combat rations and sulfa drugs to the back of the line.
This problem seems to persist.
The American army had its own re-supply problems. George Patton’s tanks, however inferior they were to the German Tigers, sometimes outdistanced their supply of diesel fuel.
The Army Transportation Corps, including the late Frank Osmanski (a retired general who lived in Beaufort for many years) came up with a concept that involved 5,458 trucks hauling thousands of tons of fuel and ammunition from the port in Antwerp to wherever in France that Patton’s tanks happened to be fighting. In 1991 I wrote,
“Once this huge army was ashore in France, he (Osmanski) devised the plan to keep it supplied as it marched through France and Germany. With 36 divisions on the continent Osmanski was faced with getting 20,000 tons of supplies from the beaches of Normandy, to the front. He conceived the “Red Ball” one way roads, the location of storage depots and flexible fuel pipes under the English Channel. At one point Osmanski told Eisenhower that Patton was ahead of the plan and his tanks would run out of fuel. Patton was told to stop. Osmanski did what Von Rundstedt could not do … he stopped George Patton.”
Vladimir Putin’s often-cited argument is that Ukraine is a “fake country” inhabited by ethnic Russians — the same argument Hitler made about Sudetenland.
But Vlad’s real argument is that Russia is entitled to a buffer country that would keep invading armies out of the Russian heartland.
He also believes in total — level the cities — artillery warfare that most of the Western world now labels “war crimes.”
Notwithstanding these beliefs, Putin has yet to master the art of keeping his own T-80 tanks topped off with fuel and keeping his men in black bread and sausages.
Putin is said to be a voracious reader — perhaps he missed Frederick the Great’s comment.
“An army runs on its stomach.”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
